Once again, the controversial food giant Kraft has hit the outsourcing headlines this week with the announcement of its recent procurement deal with Capgemini.

After recently buying the nation’s favorite chocolate-maker, Cadburys, Kraft has appointed the global consultancy to provide strategic sourcing and spend management to the company’s various purchasing categories.

This week also saw some very positive industry research from both Gartner, and the National Outsourcing Association (NOA).

The NOA published its quarterly Outsourcing Confidence Index suggesting that more than half of outsourcing end-users are more confident in the use of outsourcing in supporting their business objectives than they were in 2009.

While the financial services sector was found to be the most positive about outsourcing in 2010, the services sector also showed mighty confidence with 61 per cent, whilst the retail sector was somewhat less confident with 55 per cent.

A high 60 per cent of users intended to outsource services not previously outsourced this year, whilst 56 per cent of those already outsourcing planned to increase the scope of existing contracts.

Gartner adds to this research fuelled enthusiasm with its report. Yes you have guessed it, once again IT spending is set to rise even further, 5.3 per cent to be precise within 2010.

With worldwide IT spending predicted to reach $3.4 trillion during 2010, and IT services forecast to rise by 5.7 per cent from 2009, the outsourcing world is looking rosy.

However before we all get too excited about these upturns in activity and confidence, 78 per cent still felt supplier outsourcing capability has not improved over the past 12 months, meaning “suppliers still have some work to do”, according as Martyn Hart, Chairman of the NOA.

And finally to end on a positive note, Thomson and First Choice owner, TUI Travel has announced its five-year, £88.2m network infrastructure outsourcing agreement with Deutsche Telekom’s corporate customer arm T-Systems.

The agreement will see T-Systems provide integrated voice, data and mobile services to all TUI’s major brands.